Posted in Celtic, Nature, Seasons, tagged Celtic, consciousness, The Quest, the silver bough, time, winter on January 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Though sunny, the cold temperatures keep most inside.
A neighborhood swathed in snow, bounded only by rounded snowbanks.
Though the sky is clear, wind plays precociously with porch chimes and decorative bells, ringing down the street where I am walking.
Somewhere unseen, the silver belled bough of the ancient Celts sings. Calling to the quest those able to hear its irresistible music.
Young, old, wise, despicable—can you hear it? It is time for away.
Posted in Seasons, The Garden, tagged time, Winter garden on December 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Winter hangs on still green leaves. The autumn lingered this year, and the winter, though timely, blew in on the unsuspecting.
Fluffed flakes swirl from snow bands pushing through overhead. Autumn has fled.
Winter holds the deep past and the future. Those plants holding leaves are slowly freezing.
It is me that was unsuspecting.
Posted in Celtic, Celtic festivals, Uncategorized, tagged autumn, autumn colour, memory, Samhain, time on October 31, 2024| Leave a Comment »
It is windy tonight, trick-or-treaters come and go.
The sun has just set and the wind is high – sending flocks of leaves flying like birds from fiery colored trees.
Gradually the form, the bones, of the trees become visible, no longer lost in summer finery. Trunks and branches more flexible against the wind than one might think.
Samhain is gate and a gateway to the Celtic New Year. Tonight, the magnificence of the collaboration between wind and tree is sweeping, and the years run together in the faces of the children who crowd the porch for treats—so like my own children years ago.
And the years, like the leaves, fall and blow away, gone for another season, a lifetime.
Darkness now, the streets are quiet. Trees swaying, dark silhouettes turning against a fully night sky. The ambiguity of eternity. Things we have known, things we forget, and things we hope to forget. Happy New Year.
Posted in Eternal moments, Lived meaning, Reflections on the everyday, tagged sunrise, time on October 28, 2023| Leave a Comment »
A sunrise no words can match or quench.
Burning apricot flung across fading shade of night.
Rain from a cloudless, effortless sky deepens color on the eastern horizon.
Washing out the past and blazing the trail for the only thing we really have—this day.
Posted in Lived meaning, time, tagged consciousness, memory, time on August 26, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Decades ago, I turned a page in the magazine, Common Boundary. On the facing page was a photograph of an old woman, her eyes recessed in a plain of wrinkles, the landscape of long human life.
Her eyes were remarkable, vibrant blue, steady, deeply knowing.
The moment was profound. This extraordinary woman, the embodiment of the belief that “the eyes are a window to the soul.” I cannot recall the article. I had forgotten her eyes until this morning.
What life had she led to live within her skin and far beyond it at the same time? If there was ever a goal in life, I thought, the authenticity and honesty reflected in that gaze had to be it.
On a business trip, a hotel room anywhere. A mirror, the essential tool to minimize the lines now tracking across the map of my own face. In its reflection, I glanced into my eyes, looking at me as if I were someone else. Blue, thoughtful, knowing, steady. Seeing from and to someplace other.
In that too-quick moment, I joined the woman I so admired years and years ago. Mine was a dusty existence, I met few goals, and realized disappointment. But those eyes remain for me the mile marker of a truly lived human life. Full circle.
Posted in Eternal moments, Parents and children, Reflections on the everyday, tagged consciousness, time on May 3, 2023| Leave a Comment »
On Saturday morning while running errands, I detoured through the local small town community park. Neatly maintained pickle ball courts and baseball fields, a well-appointed playground. Gazebos for picnicking, and a small amphitheater for outdoor concerts. Early enough that the baseball crowd had not yet arrived.
A van pulled in. What appeared to be a mom and her perhaps seven-year-old son exited the vehicle and headed to the playground.
Mom looked straight ahead, her posture tired, a chronic condition of parenthood. Walking a few feet away, the boy scampered excitedly, looking expectantly at mom.
A moment in time. The poignancy of older and younger. One whose path has led them here, and one whose path is being formed in this moment.
Two sides of life, both ordinary and extraordinary, in an instant.
Posted in Nature, Seasons, The Garden, tagged autumn, gardens, time on November 5, 2022| Leave a Comment »
It had to happen.
On this morning, the flowers are more brilliant than before. Brittle frosted petals, leaves, buds. Deepened color in the autumn garden, a medieval sketch of high linear detail, a confection of final color — red, blue, yellow, green, orange. No feature missed. Paused in perfection, flowers held taut in icy fingers.
With the day, the frost relents, the flowers sag to brown mush. A slow exhalation of the garden into the coming season. Until next year.
Posted in memory, Reflections on the everyday, The Garden, time, tagged memory, time, wind on September 26, 2022| Leave a Comment »
About 4’ in height, the garden spinner has three wheels of descending size. Polyester ribbons affixed to each wheel were once brightly colored. The flag at the base of the spinner, a stitched red ladybug atop a green leaf, points to the direction of the wind.
For the last 20 years, the spinner has held court in the corner of the summer vegetable garden using the breeze, or the winds blustering through, to proclaim its presence. A gentle breeze moves the largest of the wheels first. A thunderstorm madly propels all three.
The spinner delighted young children playing in their sandbox or tending the garden. It gaily provided ornamentation at their high school Open House celebrations. And it stands now, bereft of color, but still fit, in its garden corner.
The spinner has welcomed and harvested the winds of two decades. It awakens in the Spring, grows quiet as Summer goes to ground in Autumn, and dreams away the Winter in the garage.
At first glance, it is now a tired old spinner whose day has passed. Is it an artifact too long held for its memory? While it enjoyed its sunny days, the bluster that overtook this place blew away its color and its more nimble nature. Visiting this summer, my oldest remarked on its longevity and rightful place in the garden. Just now, a puff of air moved its wobbly wheels, as it easily pivoted to reveal the direction of the unseen quality that powers it.
The spinner remains. As stalwart as the day I assembled its plastic and polyester pieces, it fulfills its purpose to translate what is unseen to the visible world. Not as pretty, but still a structural, kinetic marvel that defies a date with the landfill.
Things change, and sometimes, things remain.
Posted in Airplanes, Reflections on the everyday, tagged Air travel, memory, time on April 16, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Flying through the sky I saw the distant shadow of this airplane against the clouds. The shade tracked us into the distance and disappeared. I began to look closer and I saw…
A flock of cirrus clouds plying their way eastward beneath us
Endless rows of expressionless houses far below
The next state over, expansive tracts bisected by lonely roads
Still further, the checkerboard irrigation patterns of farming
A small town, a cluttered magnet from above
Wind turbines dotting in distant rows
Passing over the marshmallow fluff of a beautiful cloud deck
Wrinkles in the landscape below, a tribute to old elementary school salt dough maps
A jet passes us with ease at a lower altitude
The wrinkles pile up, then spread into flatlands
Small mountains look like exposed fossils of dinosaurs that once traipsed there
Arid, rolling brown land
Strips of brown and green soil, like a long row of exotic piano keys
Building clouds mirror mountains below
Another jet, passing through
The confused noodle of a dry streambed
Wheeling over mountains, the palette of the place I called Home. It’s spaciousness and tendency of quiet in magnificent wild spaces always present, even if I am not
The sun tracks across the lake, a blazing comet beneath me
New subdivisions, identical monopoly pieces
Old subdivisions, all colors, shapes, and conditions
Scrapyard, trucks and cars piled and peaceful in their final resting place
Rail yard, parallel lines stretch toward distant destinations
Rubber hits the road, touchdown.
Posted in Eternal moments, Nature, Reflections on the everyday, time, weather, tagged consciousness, memory, Snow, time on January 8, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Glistening clouds of snow blanket the ground, the roof, the roads.
You may know these mornings. Quiet, a dog barking in the distance, conifers silhouette a deep blue sky brightening before an orange-stroked sunrise.
Winter storms pass, leaving moments of unsullied stillness. Beneath the blanket and cold, some things sleep, some perish, some wait – much like memory. Other than the energy of our blood and bones we are only memory. Some memories finally pass, others will only pass when we do.
The sun will soon dazzle the landscape with its untrammeled brilliance, blinding thought to anything but glory. Then the blankets will fray to fluid and reveal again what lies there.
Shouldn't...but Do 